The acceptance of network applications and the Internet has given rise for a need to associate voice communications with various network-based applications and functions. While engaged in a telephone conference, users often share applications, such as whiteboarding applications, and web pages to enhance communications. In most instances, users initiate the voice call and then establish an application sharing arrangement independently of the voice call.
Numerous software packages have attempted to integrate voice and data communications over packet-switched networks. Unfortunately, the availability of quality packet-based voice systems is low while the circuit-switched voice systems are widely available. As such, attempts have been made to associate circuit-switched voice calls with packet-switched multimedia applications.
Previous attempts to integrate circuit switched voice calls and multimedia sessions have required proprietary protocols or cumbersome protocols, such as H.323. The lack of flexibility and complexity of these protocols have suppressed their acceptance and availability. Accordingly, there is a need for an efficient and easy to implement technique for integrating circuit-switched voice calls and packet-switched multimedia capability. Further, there is a need to provide such integration without requiring proprietary protocols and by using accepted standards that are readily available.